In Search of Stupidity 183
Ben Rothke writes "In
Search of Stupidity gets
its title from the classic, albeit infamous business book In Search of Excellence: Lessons from
America's Best-Run Companies, by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman. In Search of Excellence quickly became a
best-seller when it came out in 1988 and launched a new era of management consultants and business books. But in 2001, Peters admitted that he
falsified the underlying data. Librarians have been slow to move the book to the fiction section." Read the rest of Ben's review.
| In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition | |
| author | Merrill Chapman |
| pages | 373 |
| publisher | Apress |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | Ben Rothke |
| ISBN | 1590597214 |
| summary | Excellent analysis of hi-tech software marketing disasters |
In Search of Stupidity is not a traditional business book; rather, it's a high-level analysis of marketing mistakes made by some of the biggest and most well-known high-tech companies over the last 20 years. The book contains numerous stories of somewhat smart companies that have made stupid marketing mistakes. The catastrophe is that these mistakes have led to the demise of many of these companies.
For those who have been in technology for a while, the book will be a somewhat nostalgic look at what has happened over the years from the world of high-tech marketing. Combined with Chapman's often hilarious observations, the book is a most enjoyable and fascinating read and is hard to put down once you start.
The first chapters of the book discuss the story and mythology around the origins of DOS. It details such luminaries as Digital Research, IBM, Microsoft, Bill Gates and Gary Kildall and more. The first myth about Microsoft is the presumption that the original contract with IBM for MS-DOS gave Microsoft an immediate and unfair advantage over its competitors. The reality is that over time, MS-DOS did indeed become Microsoft's cash cow; but it took the idiocy of Apple, IBM and others to make this happen.
The book also notes that throughout its history, Microsoft would consistently make the most of its competitor's mistakes and stupidity to its advantage. The book repeatedly notes that yes, Microsoft has not always been ethical or nice; but the reality is that such behavior has also been practiced by many in the software industry. Not that it rationalizes what Microsoft has done, and to a degree still does. But it is unfair to pinpoint Microsoft as the sole miscreant in the dirty software waters.
For the better part of the last decade, Microsoft has owned the desktop. But that was not always the case. In the early 1990's IBM was frantically working on its nascent OS/2 operating system, working alongside Microsoft as a trusted partner. IBM had the cash and talent to ensure that OS/2 would own the desktop. So why did OS/2 miserably fail? It was primarily IBM's own ineptitude in marketing OS/2 which led to Windows 95 taking over the desktop. The desktop was IBM's to lose and that is precisely what it did.
Microsoft at one point was working with IBM to develop OS/2 and many have written that Microsoft took advantage of IBM in that joint effort. But Chapman writes that complete and direct responsibility for the failure of OS/2 falls completely on IBM. He notes that it is difficult to find a marketing mistake around OS/2 that IBM did not make. At the time, the market was ready to accept almost any GUI and it was Microsoft that gave the people what they wanted. It was not so much that Microsoft beat IBM; rather that IBM imploded with OS/2 and Microsoft was there to pick up the pieces.
As to ownership of the desktop, Chapman notes that even with Microsoft's near endless budget, bullying tactics, and use of the FUD factor, those alone did not enable Microsoft to monopolize the desktop operating system market. Chapman notes that the following key factors, all which are unrelated and out of Microsoft's control had to take place in order for that to happen.
First, Xerox, the original inventor of the GUI had to never develop a clue about how to commercialize the groundbreaking product that came out of its own labs. Digital Research then had to blow off IBM when it came calling to them for an operating systems for the original IBM PC. IBM would then have to fall victim to Microsoft during its joint development of OS/2.
Finally, Apple would have to decide not to license the Macintosh operating system. That decision led Apple to have a 30% share of the desktop market in the early 1990's to its current irrelevant 4% share.
Chapman lists numerous secondary factors that also contributed to Microsoft's dominance. While the accepted wisdom is that Microsoft single-handedly cornered the desktop operating system market; the reality is that the ultimate success of Microsoft is as much a result of their near endless good luck combined with the recurring stupidity of its competition.
The stupidity of IBM and Apple gave the desktop market to Microsoft. Similarly, Novell gave the NOS market to them. In the mid-1990's, Novell owned the NOS market. Netware along with myriad CNE's (Certified Network Engineerswere the dominant force in network computing. When Windows NT version 3.1 shipped (it was really version 1.0), it was clearly inferior to Netware, as myriad product reviews stated.
Yet a few years later, Windows NT was the dominant NOS and Novell was struggling. While Netware was clearly superior to NT from a functionality perspective, the genius of Microsoft was that it knew better how to deal and communicate with its development community. Today, Netware is an irrelevant NOS and Novell has effectively abandoned it to primarily focus on its Linux strategy.
Exactly at the same time Microsoft was pushing Windows NT and wooing developers, Novell shutdown its third-party development center in Austin, TX. Novell also became preoccupied with its misguided purchase of WordPerfect. Novell developers were left hanging until Microsoft came calling with its promises of NT development and marketing support. Similarly, it was Novell failures that directly lead to the success of Windows NT.
Novell had myriad chances to decimate Windows, but it never stepped up to the plate. Novell's inexperienced marketing department thought that "if you built a great NOS, they would come." But come they did not, and leave Netware they did.
It is chapter 10 that will likely give Slashdot readers a fit. The author attempts to set straight additional myths around Microsoft: that their products are of poor quality, that they have only succeeded because of its market monopolies, that they are not innovative, and more. For those who want all of the details, they should read the book. But the authors notes for example that while Microsoft has been widely criticized for not being an innovative company, it is no different from companies such as Lotus, Borland, Xerox and more.
Most recently, when Microsoft found itself behind the 8-ball and lacking a browser, Internet Explorer was quickly developer and in time, surpassed the capability of Netscape Navigator. By 1998, most reviews were giving IE a higher rating than Navigator. Of course, Microsoft has more cash and developers than Netscape, but that alone was not what doomed them. Simultaneously, Netscape derailed itself in an attempt to completely rewrite Navigator in Java. This led them to the state where they would permanently fall behind Microsoft in the development race.
The book contains 12 chapters each with a different set of stupid marketing actions. Rather than simply being a Monday morning quarterback, chapter 14 contains an analysis of each scenario and what the respective companies should have done.
In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters is a most valuable book and is a wonderful read for anyone in the software industry. For those in sales and marketing, it is clearly required reading, and in fact, should be reread periodically. While In Search of Excellence turned out to be a fraud, In Search of Stupidity is genuine, and no names have been changed to protect the guilty.
You can purchase In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, Second Edition from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
It shouldn't be just a chapter... (Score:3, Informative)
In terms of marketing blunder's... (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Platform/Technology limited competitor options (Score:2, Informative)
Apple and others did a lot of stupid things to give Microsoft the desktop. Few would claim the Windows 3.1, the first popular version, was even half as good as Mac OS at the time. However, Microsoft got Windows 3.1 to work on the VGA graphics "IBM Compatible" computers that people already owned. Furthermore, Windows 3.1 could run almost all of the DOS software that people already had.
The Mac OS GUI features required much more than the CGA and VGA graphics (over an ISA bus) that typical PCs had at the time. Even if Apple had licensed Mac OS in 1990, nobody could have gotten it working on the craptastic PCs available at the time.
Microsoft leveraged its existing DOS dominance into its Windows dominance and leverage the fact the PC hardware sucked too much to run anything better at the time. Apple no doubt thought that anyone attempting to implement a GUI would at least have direct frame buffer access the way the Mac did in 1984. PCs did not have it in 1991.
1982 (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_Of_Excelle
Table of Contents and sample chapter (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sounds like a pretty accurate book to me.... (Score:3, Informative)
I was one of the hundreds of OS/2 developers at IBM. I can tell you this, at the top of every source module for OS/2, there was this statement "Copyright 1987, Microsoft Corporation."
Yes, MS wrote OS/2 - except for the networking layer and the installation programs - the worst parts of OS/2. When I mentioned that the worst parts of OS/2 were written by IBM, I got may ass chewed out royally!!!
My point? IBM dropped the ball on OS/2. Period. Their management decided that the company's resources would be best spent on developing their software on Wondows.
Don't ask me, ask Gerstner.
The FIRST anti-trust trial. (Score:3, Informative)
So it would seem that Microsoft already owned the desktop market prior to 1995.
http://www.wired.com/news/antitrust/0,1551,35212,
The failure of the PS/2 killed OS/2 (Score:2, Informative)
In the mid 80's I was doing field service on PCs and IBM had almost complete dominance in hardware and OS (PC-DOS). There was a Compaq here and there and a few other clones but they were very rare. When the PS/2 came out the customers I dealt with were pissed.
They has brought a PC then an XT then an AT and kept all the same peripherals, monitors, add in cards, software, etc through the upgrades. Here was a new computer that was incompatible with everything they already had. Granted it was time for an upgrade, but consumers saw it as lock in and they hated it. People started buying clones in droves and the IBM dominance was dead. By the time windows 95 came out I rarely saw am IBM brand PC in a small business office.
People didn't know they were buying MS-DOS or PC-DOS or Windows or OS/2, there were buying a computer and if you bought a Compaq it came with Windows not OS/2.
Re:Chicago was vaporware for years, true (Score:2, Informative)
Think about it - we might have had a five year head start on GNU/Linux ... !
Gerald Ratner can beat that... (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner [wikipedia.org]
Re:What about the Microsoft "head-fake?" (Score:1, Informative)
Your conclusion does not necessary follow your description of facts. I was also doing OS/2 work at the time and a friend was actually on the OS/2 team. It appeared to me that Microsoft did think OS/2 would be the serious platform. How could it not be? It had IBM's huge resources. After a couple of years, however, the Windows team far outstripped the OS/2 development team and Bill Gates saw his opportunity. Eventually, Microsoft realized that a joint project with IBM was a liability, not an asset.
The difference in polish had a lot to do with the difference in development styles. Some IBM developers were always complaining that the MS developers would do things like allocate static arrays instead of using dynamically sizing data structures (ergo some of the limitations in Windows: HWNDs, etc.). In the end, however, the MS method of getting something working day-in and day-out eventually added up. The end result was a product with more effort (because there was more time "left over") put into the usability and look-and-feel than into perfect data structures in the kernel. And look what customers preferred.
Re:Apple not licensing is not a Marketing mistake (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The failure of the PS/2 killed OS/2 (Score:3, Informative)
And here is a hint of the true source of Microsoft's succes. The story really isn't about OS/2 and Windows... its about the emergence of a commodity platform.
The PS/2 was IBM's last-ditch effort to shove the commodity PC geanie back in the bottle. By this time, they had lost control of the platform they had introduced. The base system was off-the-shelf components. The gatekeeper of the whole syste, the BIOS, had been legally reverse-engineered (spawning the instant success of Compaq). An industry was rising around the "IBM PC clone" - and Microsoft was supplying an OS to anyone who wanted one. The PS/2 attempt surrounded the introduction of a competing bus archictecture - the Micro Channel Architecture (MCA). MCA was far superior to the standard ISA bus. But it was proprietary technology belonging to IBM and IBM would only allow implementing MCA bus and compatible cards under rather stiff licensing restrictions.
The industry decided to forego MCA's advantages for the advantages of a commodity platform. And so IBM lost its last battle on that front. OS/2 was collateral damage. Apple would later feel the sting. So-called clone manufactorers would continue to see their market grow. But the big winner was Microsoft who now made money (and built up network effect / market share) on every commodity platform sold... no matter who pieced it together. By the time OS/2 Warp came around... who was really keen to play IBM's game another time? And even if they were willing to... could they beat the network effect of Windows?
Re:If the review is accurate, the book is revision (Score:3, Informative)
OS/2 died when Windows 3.0 started getting bundled with new computers. Whatever happened after that was completely irrelevant, and everybody that was involved with computers back then knew it!
I agree that between the releases of Windows 3.1x and Windows 95, IBM tried a number of desperate marketing campaigns to regain some of their lost mindshare. I don't think they even dared to hope to become "the next windows" anymore, but maybe at least a sizeable alternative. But it was all futile. It didn't matter how much money they spent on advertising, or how many free CDs with full versions of OS/2 they gave out to students and (I guess) other influential computer persons (I got a couple myself). The market had already decided Microsoft was the winner, and that was that.
(I remember I tried the free CDs I got as a student. There was no doubt, OS/2 was clearly superior. It was more stable, it ran windows programs better than windows, and it ran OS/2 programs even better. The only thing that was wrong about OS/2 was that it was doomed to failure in the market. Everybody knew that. It didn't matter that it was better. It wasn't windows.)
At the launch date of Windows 95, Microsoft spent so much money it's unbelievable. Untill then, operating system upgrades rarely made important news items, but at august 24, 1995, every fucking TV news show in the world would show pictures from various launch parties around the globe, all paid for by Microsoft corporation. Extremely extravagant, but also extremely succesful. Even though everybody knew OS/2 was doomed long before this gigantic launch, after the launch it became set in stone. People who had never used or even seen a computer would confidently claim that Microsoft was the best operating system producer in the world. You can't argue with facts against such people, and they were the new buyers of computer systems. Even if they had stopped bundling windows with new computers at that time, windows would still had won!
Re:Revisionist or flawed history? (Score:2, Informative)